You do not seriously believe that this was about £10million of BASSA calculated savings do you? The cost savings of a full £62.5 million are already in place to have accepted the BASSA offer would have meant increasing the spend and reducing the savings already achieved. At no stage had BASSA had any meaningful negotiations with the company and cannot get it into their collective heads that if they had wanted to get BA to accept their offer it would have had to at least equal the already achieved savings level. To have accepted the BASSA offer would have given BA nothing, for a deal to be made there would have to be something in it for BA.
At the moment BA are sitting pretty, the strike was pretty much a failure with increasing numbers of CC returning to work. The payslips are in and despite any legal challenge the company will do the same this time around - a legal challenge will be fought tooth and nail by BA and will take months, maybe years to be resolved. Crew will get no joy from the courts in the short term and bills have to be paid today. If the crew are so poorly paid as BASSA would have us believe they will simply not be able to strike for a prolonged period.
BA seem very determined to not give in to the blackmail that a strike ultimately is, so what good will a prolonged one do? BA have not given in so far and have run a reasonable and increasing level of service, there is nothing to suggest that any more striking will reverse this trend. The more service that BA runs the worse BASSA's position becomes. Strike's are most damaging when they are a threat, once they occur unless they paralyze a company the threat goes away.
The general election will also play largely in this and cannot be ignored. The Labour party simply cannot afford to have an unlimited all out BA strike organised by their biggest donor in the middle of a General Election. Tony Woodley et al have bigger fish to fry than looking aftyer some realtively well paid cabin crew. It does not play well on the TV to see CC at Bedfont behaving dreadfully, wearing devil masks and T shirts portraying WW as Hitler.
Duncan Holley may want an all out strike but he has nothing to lose - he is out of a job unless BA are broken by this strike, the rest of the CC have not burnt their bridges yet.
Last edited by Juan Tugoh; 7th Apr 2010 at 18:12.